Today's modern economy demands access to personal identifying information in order to provide such services as health insurance, loans, jobs and even cell phone service. Unfortunately, mining that information can also be an illegal, but often low-risk goal for thieves. A recent study by Gartner, Inc. found that the identity thieves' risk of being caught is only 1 in 700. Identity theft is one of the fastest growing crimes in North America. Identity thieves can rob consumers of money, time, affordable credit, even their reputation and the consumer may not even realize it.
Under reported for years, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) now says that as many as one in every eight American adults and one in every four households has been victimized by identity thieves in the past five years. Reports indicate that there have been over nine million new victims of identity theft per year for two years running, with over 36 million new victims of identity theft in the past five years. Ten million Americans in the past year alone have fallen victim to this destructive crime. At the current rate of growth in identity theft, approximately 20 percent of active U.S. consumers of credit will be victims of identity theft by 2007. Identity theft has been the top consumer complaint to the FTC for five years in a row.
While the rise of technology has been partly blamed for an increase in identity theft and fraud, many of the ways of identity thieves obtain personal information remain decidedly low-tech. In fact, the FTC estimates that 400,000 individuals have had their mail stolen and subsequently became the victims of identity theft just last year, ABC reported in February, 2004.
The costs of identity theft to individuals and businesses are astronomical and rising. The FTC reports that direct out-of-pocket losses to consumers of five billion dollars during the last year alone and says businesses and financial institutions lost a staggering 48 billion during the same time period. Additionally, the repercussions of identity theft go far beyond the wallet for many individuals and businesses. Americans now spend almost three million hours resolving problems related to identity theft each year. Many victims report ongoing problems beyond direct financial loss, including loan or insurance rejection, failure of pre-employment screening, criminal investigation or harassment by creditors, as a result of the fraud.
Identity theft is very difficult to prevent due to the myriad number of ways that identity thieves can access a consumer's private information. Private information can be accessed by stealing an individual's mail, wallet, etc. Additionally, online schemes are becoming much more prevalent. Phishing, pharming and tacking have become commonplace in the online world. Moreover, there have been numerous security breaches at large corporations, and not just data brokers and banks. Data on approximately 13.5 million consumers has been publicly reported by businesses, hospitals, universities and other organizations as lost or stolen in the first half of 2005. Additionally, a recent survey of 163 companies found that 75% of these companies reported that a serious security breach had occurred within the past twelve-month period.
Although the loss of personal information is concerning, the critical damage occurs when that theft of personal information is used to defraud. Identity fraud is a multi-faceted and evolving problem. It may surface as internet fraud, synthetic ID fraud, credit card and mortgage application fraud, non-credit card transactional fraud, and many others. The creation of new accounts and the takeover of existing accounts are among the most damaging methods used by identity thieves.
A large amount of information needs to be aggregated from disparate sources and then analyzed in order for an individual to prevent and/or detect the theft of their identity. Accordingly, there is need for a system and method to assist individuals in preventing or detecting identity theft.